Thursday, November 26, 2009

Ancient Protests Against Deforestation

The losses of forest to flood, fire, and agriculture during our period were serious, but barely significant compared with the cutting-down of trees to satisfy the demand for wood, which increased with the growth of population and the rising standards of public and private building. Although Plato describes the permanent damage to the environment that can be done by deforestation, there is very little evidence elsewhere in Greek or Latin literature of consciences disturbed by an excessive exploitation of forests. The only complaint known to me is a mild protest in the late Roman Empire against overcutting in the Apennine forests (p. 255).

Id. p. 255:

There is also a hint in an obsequious poem by Sidonius in honor of Majorian, who was building a fleet with timber from both faces of the Apennines in the middle of the fifth century, that there had for a long time been too much timber taken from them.

The passage from Plato is Critias 111 a-d (on the deforestation of Attica, tr. W.R.M. Lamb):

[a] Consequently, since many great convulsions took place during the 9000 yearsfor such was the number of years [b] from that time to thisthe soil which has kept breaking away from the high lands during these ages and these disasters, forms no pile of sediment worth mentioning, as in other regions, but keeps sliding away ceaselessly and disappearing in the deep. And, just as happens in small islands, what now remains compared with what then existed is like the skeleton of a sick man, all the fat and soft earth having wasted away, and only the bare framework of the land being left. But at that epoch the country was unimpaired, and for its mountains it had [c] high arable hills, and in place of the "moorlands," as they are now called, it contained plains full of rich soil; and it had much forestland in its mountains, of which there are visible signs even to this day; for there are some mountains which now have nothing but food for bees, but they had trees no very long time ago, and the rafters from those felled there to roof the largest buildings are still sound. And besides, there were many lofty trees of cultivated species; and it produced boundless pasturage for flocks. Moreover, it was enriched by the yearly rains from Zeus, [d] which were not lost to it, as now, by flowing from the bare land into the sea; but the soil; it had was deep, and therein it received the water, storing it up in the retentive loamy soil and by drawing off into the hollows from the heights the water that was there absorbed, it provided all the various districts with abundant supplies of springwaters and streams, whereof the shrines which still remain even now, at the spots where the fountains formerly existed, are signs which testify that our present description of the land is true.

Meanwhile thou buildest on the two shores fleets for the Upper and the Lower Sea. Down into the water falls every forest of the Apennines; for many a long day there is hewing on both slopes of those mountains so rich in ships' timber, mountains that send down to the sea as great an abundance of wood as of waters.

The "mild protest" is obscured in Anderson's translation for many a long day there is hewing on both slopes for the Latin nimiumque diu per utrumque recisus...latus. The adverb nimium ("excessively") could modify either the adverb diu ("for a long time") or the verb recisus sc. es ("you have been cut down," addressing the Apennine mountain range). In other words, either hewing has been going on for too long a time, or too much hewing has been going on for a long time.